New Release: The Staves & yMusic – The Way Is Read

Following the announcement that The Staves are back with a stunning collaboration with yMusic, the groups have unveiled the title-track from the forthcoming record

The Way Is Read comes a week after Trouble On My Mind, the first single unveiled by the Staveley-Taylor sisters and the New York City–based ensemble…

The Way Is Read – a new album of 12 tracks – will be released on 24th November (digitally) and 1st December (vinyl) on Nonesuch Records

After being commissioned in 2016 by Justin Vernon’s Eaux Claires Festival to collaborate on a live performance piece, The Staves delved deep into yMusic’s catalogue of contemporary classical compositions to find pieces suited to their lyrics and vocals. While the Festival is known for bringing musicians together for one-off performances, this is the first time one of those partnerships has made the leap into a studio album. The LP was produced by Rob Moose and Jessica Staveley-Taylor and mixed and engineered by Brian Joseph at his studio, Hive, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin

The two groups will come together live again at a series of special shows at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis on December 1st and 2nd, and they also will perform on public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion on December 16th

Emily Staveley-Taylor says of the collaboration, “Our aim from the outset was to truly collaborate with yMusic. We wanted to feel like instruments and join in with some of yMusic’s existing work, using our voices in ways we hadn’t previously explored. We chopped up compositions and put them together again in new ways. We took old folk songs and made them abstract. The idea of forming an orchestra with these incredible musicians was fascinating. What we have ended up with is everything we’d hoped, more than we dreamed, and hopefully the tip of the iceberg”

Rob Moose of yMusic adds, “When Justin raised the possibility of our groups collaborating, we immediately upped the stakes by focusing on a combination of new Staves songs and transformations of yMusic’s composed works. It was as much a thrill to hear songs emerge organically over sections of intricate chamber music as it was satisfying to strip songs of the instrument that created them, whether guitar or piano, in order to craft new connective tissue. This project was born of voice memos sent back and forth across the seas, two frenetic days in a Manhattan rehearsal space, a festival set, and a single day of recording in the woods outside of Eau Claire”